


I'm not a doctor

by IraBragi



Series: Building Home [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Found Family, Gen, M/M, My take on the Batfam, Original Character(s), Some Swearing, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, a mix of timelines and AU, boys in love and finding family, description of torture, hopeful and happy ending, kinda OOC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2019-02-03 11:46:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12747675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IraBragi/pseuds/IraBragi
Summary: I originally had this as part of a multi-chapter fic.  I decided to delete the other chapters and re-upload them as separate fics in the Building Home series.  I'm sorry for any confusion.





	I'm not a doctor

**Author's Note:**

> I originally had this as part of a multi-chapter fic. I decided to delete the other chapters and re-upload them as separate fics in the Building Home series. I'm sorry for any confusion.

“Come on!  This isn’t a hard question!  I just need names.”  The baseball bat swung hard and fast then stopped, an inch away from my head.  At least I hadn't screamed that time.  He laughed and the next two hits connected, my right knee and my ribs.  After that I didn’t have enough air left to scream.

“You’re scared I get it.  I can protect you.”  The irony of the man with the bat promising to protect the guy he has chained to a chair seemed to be lost on him.  If the feverish glow in his eyes was anything to go by, a lot of things were lost on him.  I didn’t even think it was drugs.  Death maybe, someone he couldn’t live without, or possibly just time.  Too many shifts seeing too many bad things.  

I suppose that in the end this city is it’s own drug.  Some of fly with it, praying that they never fall.  Some fall and then we pick ourselves back up and fight to hold on to whatever we have left.  Some just fall.  

The light glinted on his badge, his gun still in it’s Gotham PD issued holster.  I wished I could tell myself that he was being reckless but honestly, I knew the truth; I wasn’t going anywhere.       

“Give me their names and this all goes away.  No more innocents dead because some freak with an agenda and some vigilante with a hero complex decide to knock out half a city block.”

“‘wasn’t a block, just a couple of buildings.”  He looked at me strangely then continued like I hadn't said anything.

“The law is there for a reason, it protects us and it _will_ keep us safe.  I can’t arrest batman, I can’t bring down Red Hood, or Catwoman, or the Joker but if I know their _names_...  Under it all they are still humans and I have a sacred duty to bring the people of Gotham to justice.”

From a certain point of view it almost made a kind of sense.  Bring them all in, put them in a hole so deep not even superman could fly his way out, let there be peace.  I wondered if I had ever been that naive.

His radio squawked and he spoke into his mic.  Whatever he heard it angered him because his face changed, morphed from maniacally earnest to just cruel.  A knife flashed and I honestly didn’t even feel the pain as a line of red opened up along my arm. 

“They aren’t coming for you, you know.  They probably aren’t even looking.  You’re not special.  There is always someone who can stitch up a few cuts.  There’s always another doctor.”

“I’m not a doctor.”  I spat blood at him.  I hoped the blood was just from the gash where I bit my tongue and not that he’d managed to drive a rib into one of my lungs.

“Keep telling yourself that.”  I heard his footsteps echo as he walked away, than a car started and, as the room swam, I wondered how long I had until he came  back.

 

`````

Once he’s out of the building I pulled at the chains, and once more tried to twist around and find anything useful - while not moving anything that hurt (which by then was everything.)  

It’s not that I’ve never been roughed up before in my life.  I spar with the world’s most sadistic child-ninja and I’ve gotten between Red Robin and his coffee.  I sleep next to a man who tends to wake up from nightmares swinging and I’ve gotten between way too many adrenaline-high people and the object of their adrenaline to escape without my share of bloody noses and bruises.  But at the end of the day I don’t patrol.  I’m the one who stitches everyone back up afterwards not the one taking the punishment.  

That’s the choice I’ve always made, and it’s one I’ll stand behind, but it does mean that being chained to a chair, that has been bolted down to concrete, somewhere deep in the darkest corner of a dark warehouse, in my dark city, isn’t something I’m exactly used to.  To Bats this is probably just another relaxing Monday evening.  I almost manage to snicker at that.  

The words he’d spit at me echo in my head, “They aren’t coming for you.  They probably not even looking.”  Then I did snicker.  He said the wrong thing.  

If he’d told me “they won’t find you” or “they aren’t going to get here on time” then I might have agreed with him.  But he said “they won't even look.”  There are some things that you just _know_.  Deeper than your address, than the street you grew up on, or the friend you had in the second grade.  Things that aren’t even facts any more, that are just truths.  Your name, the faces of the ones you love, the fact that my family will be looking for me.

I just have to keep believing that they are going to find me in time.   

 

`````

(Three days ago, commissioner Gordon's office:)

“Detective Haynes, I understand that you are new to this force, and I truly do respect your dedication but there are a few things about this city that you need to understand.  I’m not defending vigilantism and if you can bring me batman with a charge that will actually stick I’ll personally see to it that the mayor gives you a medal.  But, I have one hundred men with handcuffs and a jail that might as well be made of cardboard, verses some of of the world’s worst scum.  Sometimes son, you have to do the math and face that fact that there is a limit to what we can do.”

Commissioner Gordon wondered what the younger man saw as he stood stiffly in front of him, eyes fixed on a point just over his superior officer’s left shoulder.  Probably the same thing that he, himself, saw twenty years ago standing in this same office: a sell out.  An old man who was too afraid or too lazy to challenge the status quo.  A disgrace to the uniform.  The older man sighed. 

“As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to understand just how much I don’t know, but if there is one thing I’m sure of it’s this: what you are proposing is so far outside of both the law and any sense of morality that I’m honestly concerned for your mental state.  Chapel is, as far as we know a civilian who might have information about vigilante activity.  We do not use civilians as bait, and under no circumstances do we set up a raid designed to end in blood shed.  Period.  Go do your job, bring me evidence and a legal way forward and then we will talk.  Dismissed.”

Had his eyes ever burned that bright?  On the knife’s edge of madness?  What even was madness in this city where the mad was sane and the sane was impossible.  He tried to make his voice firm, prayed that the officer would hear him before that fire burned him down to a husk.  The man saluted and marched out of the office.  

The next day Batman would grab him in the alley outside his apartment, hands shaking with rage.

“Where is he?  What have your men done?”

 

````` 

The college where I worked was opening a new building and I guess they wanted more bodies to look good for the press.  I wasn’t anyone important, a lab grunt saving up to go back to college one day, but a free day was a free day so I found myself mixing with the big important people, standing in the summer heat and ignoring the speeches.  It was between the third and fourth round of preening for the cameras that I noticed the kid.

He was young, almost certainly not a student, and he was tugging at his tie with a viciousness that is usually reserved for dead tv remotes and attempted muggers.  There was something about the way he was looking around that suggested impending mayhem if he wasn’t intercepted soon.  Honestly I was just as board.

“Hey there, who dragged you to this purgatory?”  His eyes were dark and intelligent and I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was being measured.  Then he shrugged.

“My father.”

“Ah, I work here.”  A nod.  Well this was going just swell.  Then he flashed a sudden grin.

“Would you like to see something?”  With that he was off; two running steps, and he jumped, somehow catching the tree branch that was a solid two feet above his head pulling himself up and swinging around it.  He hung in midair for a moment then gracefully landed, looking entirely pleased with himself.

“Dang you’re good.  Where did you learn that?”

“I practice.  I also know martial arts and such.”  After that show I could believe it.

And that was how I ended up wandering off with a kid almost ten years younger than me (“It’s only eight years difference, I am thirteen years old”) who spoke with the measured vocabulary of a professor and had the proclivity for violence of a berzerker.   

 

`````

When he came back he had food.  Once he freed one of my hands (careful to keep his gun out of reach, damn him) he passed me a sandwich and sat cross legged on the floor a few feet away.  He looked tired.

“This city is broken.  You know this, you see it.  Violence breeds violence, and it’s never going to stop as long as we let some people continue being outside of the law.”  I wondered what law he thought entitled him to persuasion-via-baseball-bat.  I chewed my sandwich and kept quiet.  My jaw bloody hurt.

“They waltz around in masks and hide their faces.  They laugh at the laws the rest of us live under.  But you, you're different.  You don’t have a mask.”

I did laugh at that.  It wasn’t that I didn’t have a mask, it was that my whole life was a mask.  Or maybe I _was_ my mask?  Whatever, this was way too philosophical for the amount of blood I had lost.

“I came here and I watched the vigilantes walk over this city with impudence, Batman, the Robins, Nightwing, Red Hood, Oracle, all of them.  Then I heard whispers of someone else.  Someone who didn’t wear a mask, someone who stood for something else, something better.  Chapel.  If you were hurt, if you were vigilante or villain or street kid, Chapel was someone who would patch you up.  At first I thought that that was good.  That maybe we were on the same side.  Maybe I could trust you.”

 

```````

The first time Damien invited me over I almost had an heart attack.  I might not follow the news particularly closely but even I knew who the Wayne's were.  When a butler, (a butler!) opened the door I had a moment of pure panic and the all consuming urge to turn tail and run.  Then the distinguished looking gentleman greeted politely me and informed me that “master Damien would be down shortly.” (He was, apparently the chandelier in the front hallway is also a good place to swing from.)

 

``````

“But then I thought of something else.  You know them.  You have to.  Their faces, their names, the things that they hide to stay above the rest of us.  So it’s you, you can change this -  make things right.  All I need to know is who and then I can take them down.  I can make there be peace.”  His eyes were so full of belief in what he was saying.  I almost felt bad for him.

 

``````

We were working on katas in the back garden (apparently rich people have enough gardens that they have to delineate between them) when an older boy wandered over.

“Who’s your friend squirt?”  Damien visibly bristled at the nickname and, with all the prim grace of an injured peacock, informed him that,

“He is not my friend.  He is an acquaintance who has shown an aptitude for martial combat.”  Since he was clearly too busy sulking to introduce us I walked over and stuck out my hand.

“Hi I’m Aaron Ellis, I think you brother just likes kicking my ass.”

“Tim.  Are you staying for dinner?”

Apparently that was all it took.

Dinner was a noisy affair.  There was another brother named Richard who went by Dick, and I had already met the German shepherd (I think that Tim was disappointed that he didn’t try to eat my face off) and a cow that was for some reason named Bat.  

If I had ever stopped to think about what kind of people the Waynes were I would have assumed stuck up and entitled.  Instead they were loud and all seemed to hate each other in the most affectionate way possible.  It was the exact opposite of my politely awful family and I found myself loving it. 

I was worried that they would be suspicious of someone so much older than Damien hanging around but apparently they had faith in his ability to tear my arm off if I tried anything untoward and Bruce, their father, just seemed happy that his son had a friend at all. I got the impression that the young teen didn’t get along well with his peers.

`````

(Detective-Captain Smith’s office, one month ago)

“He’s the in.  If I can find this Chapel then I can charge him with, at the very least, aiding and abetting.  Then we offer to let walk if he testifies.”  Detective Haynes supposed that he shouldn’t have been so surprised by the dismissal, but the snorting laughter coming from his superior strained his ability to stay professional.    

“Damm that’s a good one son, have you been thinking about it for a while?”  The pig of a man slapped his hand on the desk and let out another snort of laughter.  Something of his rage must have slipped through though because his boss sobered up and fixed him with a curious stare.

“You do understand what you’re saying, right?  Do you know how many folks this month alone have shown up at the precinct, bandaged up and telling me that they are willing to testify because Chapel promised them they would be safe?  Usually about ten minutes after their bad guy is dropped off in a strangely talkative mood by one of the bats?  Look son, I get it, you want to make your mark, make a name for yourself, but this - this - is not the way to go.  Find someone else but leave the Bats alone and for Christ’s sake leave Chapel out of it.”

 

`````

“Why?”  It seemed like such a such a dumb question.  The hero is stuck and about to die so he tries to reason with the villain.  But I was stuck and it felt like I was about to die - although I suppose that the hero part was probably a bit of a stretch.

 

`````

When Detective Haynes flashed his lights and pulled me over I was annoyed.  I didn’t think I was speeding and I had the thought that, if Jason had messed with the speedometer on the bike again I was going to kill him.  Instead he identified himself as an GPD detective and wanted to talk.

Detective Robert Haynes bought me a coffee and started rambling about how he knew, he /knew./  We were five minutes in before he just spit it out and called me Chapel.  I showed him the name on my driver's license.  He laughed.  I told him that if he could prove anything he wouldn’t be talking to me here and walked out.  I had my cellphone out and was starting to dial Jason when the service baton connected with the back of my head.  My last thought was that Damien would be so angry with me for letting someone get the jump on me.  That was two days ago.

 

`````

“Why?”  

He hadn't been beating me the whole time.  Instead he seemed to be cycling through “good cop, bad cop” except with only one cop and a hair trigger for changing roles.  He started out sounding almost reasonable.  As if we were in a interrogation room and not a warehouse that had probably been condemned well before either of us were born.

“Just give me their names.  I want to bring the vigilantes to justice.  There is Arkham for the crazies and without the damn bats sticking their noises where they don’t belong the police will have to step up and do their jobs.”

“Ears.  I think you mean ears.  Bat’s don’t have that great a sense of smell but they have _excellent_ hearing.”  That was the point where my nose was suddenly and violently reshaped.

`````

Snark and adrenaline can only keep you going for so long and I was well beyond that point.  We were done eating and he was looking anstey.  There was only so many ways I could not answer him before he started getting angry again and I was getting truly frightened that he would get fed up and just kill.  So I asked him: “Why?”

“Because you have lost someone too.”  There must have been confusion on my face because was almost gentle as he snapped the cuff back on my hand.  Once it was secure he tapped my ring.  

“You wear it on your right hand.  You lost them.”  He reached into his hat and held out a picture.  It was a boy.  Big smile and messy hair that probably never laid down neatly.

“Heroes don’t care about the fall out.  They don’t care when a boy runs away from home finds his way to a new city where drugs are easy and no one cares if you are a criminal as long as you aren’t a “villain” (the hate dripped off his teeth.  I wondered if it would burn a hole in the floor.)  They aren’t there when a family has to identify…”  He stopped talking.  

He didn’t have to say anymore, I could figure out the rest.  He was angry.  At the world, at the system, at himself most of all.  And somewhere along the way his anger took on a name.  Something, anything, to point at so he could be too busy hating /them/ to look in the mirror.  It was an answer alright.  I probably should feel bad for him.  The broken ribs and nose, cuts, and most-likely dislocated knee made it rather hard to summon up the feeling.

There was one thing that I had learned though.  He thought that I was a widower.  I wondered how much else he didn’t know.

 

`````

It actually took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out the whole Batman thing.  There was never one thing that tipped me off, just a lot of little things that all fit together:  The weird schedules that the whole family kept, the level of training that went well beyond after-school karate, the multiple bat-themed gadgets that were always laying around.  As I remember I phrased it as a joke, forgetting that Damian had approximately zero ability to read humor or sarcasm so instead of laughing it off he looked at me and responded with, “and if I was Robin?”  

After I picked my jaw up off the floor he jumped up and announced, “well since you figure it out I guess I can show you the real training room now” and started dragging me toward the door.

It was at that point that my mind came online enough and I planted my feet and very firmly insisted that I was _in no way_ going into the bat cave to see super secret things that I shouldn’t even know about without his father’s express permission.  That seemed like a good way to find myself mind-wiped or disappeared.  Damien had rolled his eyes and changed the direction he was dragging me.

The look on Bruce Wayne's face when his son marched in and informed him that, “Aaron has shown a passing amount of intelligence and realizes the family secret.  He demands your permission before I show him the cave” is one I will never forget.

 

`````

“HE WAS MY BROTHER!  I was supposed to take care of him!  Why won’t you help me make this right?”  The fist dug into my jaw and then my stomach.  My head snapped back and my vision blurred.  I’m not a hero.  The world started to grey out.  I couldn't handle this.  I just wanted it to end.

`````

As soon as Damion was finished showing me the high-tech, bat themed, crime fighting hideout (with a  vaguely menacing Bruce following behind us) he started trying to convince me that I should become a vigilante myself.  Apparently I, “show promise, and could one day be a useful ally.”  I had nodded politely a lot and then made up an excuse for why I needed to leave.

I think I might have walked out the front door and never came back if Alfred hadn’t intercepted me and coaxed me to the kitchen with the promise of brownies and hot chocolate.

“He can be a bit intimidating, can’t he master Aaron.”  I’d nodded then felt guilty.

“Damion is just enthusiastic.”  There, that sounded polite, I hoped.  The older man smiled.

“I meant Master Bruce.  You don’t have to worry you know.  You passed the background checks with flying colors.”  I was somehow less than surprised that I had been investigated.  After the last hour it just seemed like one more piece of this ridiculous, unbelievable, mess that I had found myself in.

“So do I have to be a hero or something now?  Fight crime or I’ll disappear?  God, do I have to wear _tights_?"  He actually laughed at that.

“I’m quite sure that both crime fighting and tights are optional.  You are a smart young man and I have every faith that you will sort out your place in this madness in your own time.  Until then, there are plenty of brownies.  Why don’t you take some to the boys before they get cold?”

 

`````

“Justin Wadsworth”  I spat the name through bloody lips.  “It’s the name that Red Hood always uses.”  He looked almost suppised.  Maybe he really hadn’t thought that I would talk.  The world is both too fuzzy to be real and too real to stop hurting.  Everything was pain anyway so I slumped down and focused on trying to breath.  He nodded one more time and walked away.

It was one of Jason’s aliases.  I had no idea how long it would to take him to figure out that it was a dead end.  I hoped when he did he just shot me and got it over with.

 

``````

I didn’t meet Jason Todd until almost a year after I started my strange friendship with the rest of the Wayne family.  By then I had mostly relaxed about the whole masked-vigilante-of-the-night thing.  So one day in early spring after Alfred told me that Damian was “downstairs” in that tone that I had learned to read as meaning the bat cave I walked in to the sounds of mortal combat.

“Hey you there!  Tell this little twerp that it doesn't matter how fancy he talks if he can’t even be bothered to read the classics.”  The man shouting at me was currently standing on a sawhorse that was part of the practice gym in the middle of the main room.  And he was - there was no other way to put it - _hot_.

The fact that Dick Grayson, or more specifically the spandex-wearing Nightwing, was attractive had crossed my mind a few times.  But between his public persona as Gotham’s younger playboy and his private personality which was that of a chihuahua on speed, it had never been more than a fleeting though.  Tim and Damian were kids and Bruce was old enough to be my father.  But this person; tall and dark, with muscles that suggested that he too was part of the “patrol the night for justice” brigade, and a leather coat that pulled it all together - damm!  It was enough to make anyone lose all ability to speak.     

Luckily everyone seemed too absorbed to notice my brain short circuiting.  Damian, and Dick were on opposite side of the room tossing something between each other.  With a furious battle cry the newcomer dove off of his perch and used the momentum to propel himself into a tuck and roll.  Presumably with the intent of taking out Grayson.  Except he misjudged and collided with the computer desk.  With an enraged squawk Tim and his computer were dumped onto the floor in a tangle of wires, limbs, and coffee cups.  Forgetting their game of catch, the other two brothers ran to help and I walked over to see what the contentious item was.  It was a battered copy of Pride and Prejudice.

 

```````

It had been hours, or at least it felt like it.  I couldn’t decide if I was more scared by the thought of Detective Haynes coming back, or the idea that he might just leave me here to rot.  The fear was like a merry-go-round from hell, round and round until I want to puke or pass out.  Actually I’m pretty sure that I did both.  I didn’t want to think so I tried to make myself remember.

 

```````

The whole moonlighting-as-a-quasi-field-medic thing really started by accident.  Tim sliced his hand open while the four of us were working on building a rc helicopter is in the garden.  (Lately Jason had been coming around more often.  I couldn’t figure out why, as he spent most of his time arguing loudly with either his brothers or father but I wasn’t exactly complaining.)

My first thought was that he should probably go to the hospital and get stitches but I no sooner expressed that thought then Tim rolled his eyes and stated that he’d, “just get Alfred to sew it up.”

It turns out, rather unsurprisingly, that the manor had a medicine cabinet that would put most well equipped hospitals to shame.  I was fascinated.  I’d always been interested in people and medicine, and fixing things, but it takes time and money to learn and I’d never had extra of either.  

Alfred was as calm stitching up a bleeding thumb as he was putting dinner on the table or informing Bruce that his presence was required to help put out a fire in the guest bedroom.  (No one ever confessed to that one but Damien was off patrol for a week and Tim had looked awfully self satisfied.)

After he administered a shot of local anesthetic and finished the first couple of stitches the old butler had turned to me and nonchalantly asked if I’d like to finish up.  Tim had made a noise of pure horror and Damian looked absolutely delighted at this development.

The thing is, I’m stubborn.  Plenty of things terrify me but give me a challenge and I’m hard pressed to walk away.  Add in not wanting to look dumb in front of Mr. tall-dark-and-scarred and I took the needle and (with directions from Alfred) apparently didn’t do a half bad job.  (At the very least Tim doesn't have a scar.)  Alfred must have seen something in me because before I left that afternoon he handed me a book on emergency first aid and suggested I start with the chapter on trauma.

 

```````

When I faded back to awareness I was still alone.  It was much colder so I guessed that it was night again.  I kept running through my mind that there should be something that I could do to get out of here but damned if I knew what.

The cuffs on my hands were pulled tight behind my back and attached to the chair.  I don’t think I could get enough leverage to break my thumbs and even if I did my feet are equally chained.  The chair was bolted down and there wasn’t anything within twenty feet of me, not even a nail on the floor.  The bastard must have swept before he brought me here.  Even though the very fact that I wasn’t gagged suggested that screaming wouldn't  be any use, I still tried; shouting and screaming until my throat was as painful as the rest of me.

Nothing that he’d done to me was immediately life threatening, but between dehydration from puking, what I suspected was a concussion, and the growing cold, I knew that there was only a limited amount of time before shock starts to set it - if it hadn't already.  With that comforting thought I let myself fade out again.

 

````````

Dating Jason was a slow dance of both of us being too shy to admit that it was happening.  

The first time he showed up at my apartment, in full Red Hood gear looking like he had just finished patrol, he handed me a copy of the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice.  Earlier that week we had argued about which of the two main film adaptations were better.  Half an hour later he’d fallen asleep on my couch.  

He started showing up at my door (after the first time he tapped on my third story window and I had an honest-to-god heart attack, he stuck to the door) and we would watch TV or Netflix.  I started to realize that he was showing up after bad patrols.  After a while we started talking.

He told me about being a kid, living more on the street than in whatever apartment his mother was crashing in that week.  I talked about growing up in a more-or-less cult, equally fascinated by and scared of the outside world.  He told me about ending up in Arkham and finding the burning fury that pushed him to get his head together enough to escape.  I tried to keep my voice from shaking when I remembered coming out to my parents and their waiting almost a month for their emailed response, “our sin nature confuses us and leads us to harm ourselves.”  

He didn’t like to talk about what came after that, but I knew that it hadn't been pretty.  And maybe I’m closer to evil than light myself because, christ, some of those nights I wanted to put a bullet in the Joker's head personally.  Jason would shrug though, “he’s in Arkham, if he stays there…” the second part of the sentence, “but if he gets out again I won’t wait for Batman” he left unsaid.

We talked about PTSD and therapists, the good ones and the bad, and tricks we’d learned to get by when you’re crazy in a world that wants you to pass as sane.  He reminisced about working with the Outlaws, finding friends and the space to build a life.  How after the Outlaws disbanded he came back to Gotham full time. 

“Working with Bats is a pain, but dear old dad does have the best toys.”  

I laughed and told him about my weird friendship with his younger brothers and how it was the beginning of leaving my past behind.  They may be the most dysfunctional family on the face of the earth but deep down they love each other.  Sometimes /very/ deep down.

 

``````

I thought that I was hallucinating things the next time I woke up.  Detective Haynes had three heads and a bazooka pointed at me while shouting in Latin.  Eventually I worked out that he was actually here, only had two heads, and Gotham PD issued handgun.  The Latin I’m still not really sure about.

“You LIED to me!”

Fist to the jaw

“YOU LIED”

He stomped my foot with his combat boot.  Crushing the metal shackle into the top of my foot with a sickening, bone shattering, crunch. 

“THERE IS NO SUCH PERSON”

The kick to my, already dislocated, knee turned my world to white.  When I came back he still screaming. 

“I CHECKED”

Thud, I wondered how many ribs I had left.   
“FUCK YOU!”

My head snapped back against the top of the chair from the force of the blow.  Somehow that one didn’t really hurt that badly.      
“YOU ARE THE SAME AS THEM!”

I hoped that Bruce found him before Jason did.  It’s not that I didn't want my fiance to blow this fucker’s brains out, it just won’t be fair to make him live with that.

``````

We were lying under the stars.  Somewhere down a backroad, far away from of Gotham’s lights.  We had parked the motorcycle in a cow pasture and sat, arms around each other, enjoying the peace.

“I was going to ask you here, to marry me I mean.”

“I liked how you did ask me.”

He was so solid.  It was one of the things I loved most about him.  That he’d been through so much and just kept fighting to put the pieces back together.  We were both of us so fucked up and yet we both chose to make space among the shards for each other.

“So how does this wedding thing work anyway?  Am I supposed to get a second ring for you when we actually tie the knot?  Or is that just girls?  Do we have to sign paperwork and shit?  Shit!  Bruce is going to want to have a _wedding_ wedding isn’t he?  God, why is this so complicated?”  

I’d laughed.  We decided that the only ring I wanted was the one he had given me, so I’d wear it on my right hand until we actually got married then switch it over to my left.  He wanted a tattoo (neither of us were particularly optimistic about the chances of any ring that he wore staying in one piece for long) and we threw increasingly ridiculous tattoo ideas back and forth until we were breathless from laughing.  Eventually we stopped talking and found ourselves breathless for other reasons.     

 

``````````             
“YOU DON’T DESERVE TO BE CALLED A DOCTOR!”

“‘M n’t doct’er”  

My lips didn't want to form the syllables.  Then there was a scream and I wondered where I got the air to make that noise until I realized - it wasn’t me screaming.    

```````

In the end it wasn’t one of the bats, or the rogues, hell even a few of the villains apparently had men out looking.  How much that had to do with me and how much it was thanks to the rather large reward Batman had offered for my return is debatable.  In the end though, it was a kid.

She was one of many that I’ve talked to over the years.  I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t even remember her name when I saw her crawl in one of the half boarded up windows and stop short, looking between me and detective Haynes.  Although I suppose that under the circumstances it might be forgivable.  Concussions are murder on your memory recall.  

Tanya Sawyer had been fifteen going on fifty when Ivy dropped her (quite literally) kicking and screaming on my doorstep.

“She needs narcan, her father needs his face rearranged.  I’ll handled one you take the other?”  She had been gone before I could respond and I’d turned my attention to getting the child calmed down enough to find out what happened.  She slept on our couch that night but I wasn’t really surprised when she disappeared with most of the food in our fridge before we woke up.  At least she hopefully knew that she had options when she was ready.

She looked back to me, and I saw the gun.  Then Haynes was on the ground clutching his side and screaming like a wounded bull.  I wondered if she was working as a henchman for someone because there was no hesitation as she used his own cuffs to tie him, pulled his gun from it’s holster, check the safety and clip, then pushed it into her backpack.  Then she turned to me.  I wished I could have passed out as she got the cuffs of me and lowered me onto the floor.

“G’t Bats…”  I knew I was talking in my head, I just wasn’t sure if any of the words were actually forming.  She must have understood though because she nodded and stood up.  The detective was whimpering and trying to press against the blood stain forming on his side.

“I’d shut up if I were you.  It’s not like you’re dying or anything.”  Her boot connected with his crotch and the whimpering turned into an agonized scream. 

“Yet.  You’re not dying yet.”

``````

There was more after that.  I remember Nightwing, and I remember an ambulance.  I’m pretty sure that someone jumped on the roof of the ambulance and pounded on the window until it stopped and let them in - although that might just have been the drugs hitting my system come to think of it.  What I do know is that when I woke up I was in a hospital room Jason was sitting next to me wearing all of his gear except the mask.  The circles under his eyes were so dark that my first thought was that he had gotten his face bashed in again.  I don’t want to know how he got the guns past the nurses.

``````

The aftermath wasn’t easy.  Healing takes time, as did figuring out how to walk again after surgery to reconstruct my foot and fix my knee.  Jason wasn’t the only one waking up screaming from nightmares for a long time after, and Damien was proud of the viciousness that I put into training when I was cleared by Alfred to start back again.  

But some things are too solid for any storm to break.  I chose this crazy, messed up, dangerous life.  I chose to love a man who is trying to punch this fucked up world into being a little less awful, and in three weeks I’m going to marry him.  I watch my chosen family leave every night to patrol the darkness and I patch them up in the mornings after the dark has done it’s best to kick their teeth in.  This life may kill me yet, and I accept that.  But I know that, come what may, my family will never not look for me.

And I’m really not a goddamn doctor!


End file.
